Just a month past the 20th anniversary of the founding of Amy Slaughter’s Fredericksburg interior design business, Slaughter is savoring something new in her clientele.
“The thing that I’m really appreciating and enjoying the most right now is a kind of a shift in culture,” she says from the Slaughter Design Studio office in a renovated historic home near downtown Fredericksburg. “I think that a lot of people, especially post-pandemic, are feeling the liberty and the freedom to really express themselves – people are just a lot more relaxed or free to express themselves in their homes. Most people want that, but previously they only achieved it sometimes – and sometimes not.”
Slaughter and her team are helping clients to manifest this newfound freedom through art and color selection, in particular, she says. “There is a lot of saturation of color right now, and I think that just makes for really interesting spaces.”
Clients’ willingness to express themselves rather than seeking to look like everyone else, “provides definition, gives us focus,” Slaughter says.
It opens up conversations that can yield unique solutions for each job. “We ask, what aesthetic are you after? What’s important to you? What do you value most and what do we need to do to express that? What do we need to express in your interior? It provides clarity.”
Another question Slaughter’s team always asks is, “what are we designing around?” It could be furniture coming out of another residence, a collection of art, or even technology.
“Technology is always important to find out — like to what degree they want to explore that,” she says. “Whether it’s something as simple as home security or whether we’re doing full-on video and iPads everywhere, and motorized drapery and window coverings.”
“It’s got to be cohesive, right? You don’t want to find out those things when you’re six months into design.”
It’s the details that create that cohesion, she says. “We get down to the nitty gritty of each and every room, because for the most part here we are focused on full-service interior design. So we are dirt to drapes, you know what I’m saying?”
What’s trending
While a new freedom of expression is the broad trend Slaughter is seeing, when asked to identify some more specific current trends, the first things that Slaughter lands on decidedly hearken back a bit.
“Crazy enough, trims! We’re seeing a lot of bullion trims on bases of sofas, curtain edging, pillows, chairs. That’s really fun.
“Wallpaper has been around for a bit, you know, it’s having a moment or a day.”
The third trend she calls out was ratified by her daughter, who just took an interior architecture position in Dallas. “She called me after a rep meeting and she’s like, Mom, you’ll never believe what she told me is coming back. And I said, wallpaper borders. And she said, ‘Yes! How did you know?”
Slaughter chuckles. “I’m like, I’m not sure I could get out on that trend.”
But she probably can’t rule it out, because she says her “ability to kind of get in my client’s head” and “help them define the aesthetic that they’re after,” is her most important skill. “I don’t know that I really have an aesthetic that I’m known for. I think my upbringing and moving all those years (as a military brat) made me pretty adaptable and approachable, and I think that reflects in the work that I do.”